When a restaurant is to serve sliced food items, such as sliced tomatoes, a substantial amount of preparation time would be required at the restaurant to slice and otherwise prepare the sliced products. After the food products are purchased and delivered to the restaurant, they would have to be cleaned, sliced, and made available for placement on the salad, sandwich, or other menu item. It is somewhat difficult for the person slicing the food items to prepare slices of uniform width and consistency and there is a substantial amount of waste because of improper slicing, etc.
In the instance of fast food restaurant chains, the owners of the restaurant chain usually desires to present a uniform food product, such as hamburger of uniform size, appearance and taste, with tomatoes applied to the hamburger, and with the hamburgers and all of its ingredients being substantially identical from one restaurant to another. It has become important that tomatoes, in particular, be sliced to a desired thickness when placed on sandwiches, salads etc. of a restaurant of a chain of fast food restaurants. This provides the customer with confidence that the food products will be uniform from one restaurant to the other within the chain of restaurants. Accordingly, restaurant managers now prefer to receive food items in proper condition for placement on a sandwich, salad, etc., for immediate service to the customer without preparation steps such as slicing the food products.
Various prior art slicing machines have been prepared for the purpose of slicing food products. It is desirable that slicers of articles, such as tomatoes, function rapidly, uniformly, efficiently, and with enough gentle care to not damage the food products, and with the ability to deliver the food products in a handy, attractive condition. For example, it is desirable that tomatoes be sliced and packaged with such gentle care that the juices of the tomato are substantially maintained in the tomato slices, not exuded from the tomato, and that the circular shape of the perimeter of the tomato be maintained without any discernible bruising or other damage.
By cutting tomatoes in slices of uniform thickness, a force is applied by the cutting implements to the tomato, tending to squeeze or otherwise collapse the tomato during the slicing function. In addition, there usually is a phase in the slicing and packaging operation where the sliced tomatoes are dropped from one operation toward another operation during which there is a hazard that the tomato slices will loose their juices and that the slices will become tilted or otherwise misaligned with one another, creating non-uniformity of the product in the shipping tray or other package of sliced tomatoes.
For most food items to be sliced, there is a need to discard the end slices such as the opposite ends of tomatoes since the end slices are not acceptable for use in the sandwiches, salads, etc.
The prior art includes U.K. Patent Specification 600,131 dated Sep. 28, 1945 discloses a slicer that pushes potatoes or other vegetables through parallel cutter wires to form the potato into a pair of end slices and a plurality of intermediate slices. The end slices are collected separately from the intermediate slices.
U.S. Patent Application 20020170398, publication date Nov. 21, 2002 discloses a slicing device similar to the U.K. potato slicer that simultaneously pushes a plurality of tomatoes or other vegetables or fruit through reciprocating cutting blades.
These and other prior art slicers function to slice tomatoes and possibly other similar edible products into slices of uniform thickness which is desired by most restaurants.
One of the problems with the known prior art slicers is that some tomatoes are so delicate that the slicing, delivery and packing of the tomatoes damages the tomatoes by tending to expel the liquid portions of the tomatoes from the slices and bruising the tomatoes. Another problem is that the prior art slicers appear to be limited to cutting products in a small range of sizes that tends to limit the sizes of products that can be successfully processed by the slicer. Yet another problem of the prior art is that because the cutting blades of the slicer reciprocate during the cutting of the articles, a relatively long span of the cutting blades must be available for the cutting function and the supports for the blades are so far apart that the blades tend to bend or twist during the cutting function and there is a hazard that the fins of the pusher that pass between the blades while pushing the tomatoes will inadvertently engage and damage the blades.
This invention provides the steps of cutting, gathering, and delivery of slices of tomatoes in such a way as to reduce the hazard of deterioration of the tomato slices, such as reducing the amount of liquid loss from the tomato slices and reducing the bruising of the tomato slices, and is useful for performing these functions over a larger size range of tomatoes.